After all this time?

This Lenten season, I've decided to put on, rather than take away. I guess, like most working parents, the pandemic has weakened my resolve and frazzled my nerves to the point that I barely entertained the idea of the chocolate and alcohol fast that has been my Lenten go-to for the past few years. Pandemic or no pandemic, though, I've discovered in the past week that "putting on" isn't exactly a cake walk- mmm...chocolate cake... told you fasting wasn't in the cards this year. 

Last week, I tried putting on patience. I chose this virtue first because my school had to pivot, once again, to our virtual platform because of a COVID exposure, and I knew that I needed patience to make it through. I meditated on this virtue each morning and explored places that I saw patience at work (or not at work) in my life. The "results" were grimmer than I had anticipated. Virtual school is a struggle for me. I spend a lot of time trying to convert lessons to virtual format, but then still worry about my students' engagement and comprehension. All that time in front of a computer sitting in basically the same hunched-over position makes me physically ill. Grades were due yesterday and the day ended with the question that scorched the earth of all marriages in 2020-"who is supposed to be watching the kids during this Zoom meeting?" So is it any wonder that my week of meditation on patience ended in a roar when I  accidentally smacked my hand against the wall while telling my kids that yes, they do, in fact,  have to wash their hands after playing at a public park. I had to go into the other room and let out the yell. Story thought I was screaming because of her and was on the verge of tears. I apologized while unpacking her Happy Meal. When I began my week of meditation on patience, this wasn't how I envisioned it ending. 

So, I'm a bit scared of putting on what I feel needs to come next. This week I will try to put on love. 

I'm up in the middle of the night because of love. Because love for my son means I wake up when he calls out in the night, and because love for God drives me to use these wee hours to think and read about Him, once I'm wide awake. 

I think about God a lot. Both in the day and night. I have since my early 20's. But my thoughts have shifted with age. My mind has never been an easy place, and my heart, now that I'm getting to know its terrain in my 30's is less easy still. The pitches of faith that once felt easy to climb, have grown steeper as I've stepped away from certainty and embraced a less evangelical theology. To some, this might look like a loss of love for the Almighty. But does a loss of certainty mean a loss of affection for the Holy One? 

I used to think that it might. It's a scary thing to shift one's faith. It makes people angry, concerned and uncomfortable- let alone what it does to one's own psyche. That's another blog (er..book? for another day... let's stay focused on love) And in that shift, maybe the most frightening thought of all is this- will I lose the Person that I have grown to love? Will questioning, shifting, probing around in my beliefs terminate my affection for the Almighty? This question has kept me up in nights past. Happily, though- I'm here with an answer to that question. An answer borne of many sleepless nights, flowing tears, countless conversations, podcasts and prayers, poems and books- an imperfect and developing answer that reflects my untidy and unfinished love. 

 Pastor Howard has us reading John Meacham's The Hope of Glory for Lent. He puts the answer beautifully 

"Fundamentalist believers and fundamentalist atheists would both do well, I think, to acknowledge that literalism may be comforting but is ultimately dangerous, for an uncritical acceptance of one worldview or another (whether in religion or politics) ends more conversations than it begins. Light can neither emanate from nor enter into a closed mind...without reason we cannot appreciate complexity; we cannot rightly appreciate the majesty and mystery of God and without rightly appreciating the majesty and mystery of God, we foreclose the possibility of the miraculous and the redemptive."

Love is deep, complex, and beyond where I currently am. My love for God, deep and untidy as it may be, is but a speck compared to God's love for me, for humanity, for this created world. Because God is love. And God is deep and complex and beyond. But love, because of "the miraculous and the redemptive" is also here. And it is in deep contemplation of that truth, that I've found fertile soil for love to grow. Those pitches of faith have become steep and sometimes uncomfortable, but the view from here is phenomenal. I've never been able to see so much love as from these wobbly heights. 

I read Harry Potter in the past year. To some Christians, this is heresy. To those who've read, though, you'll understand what I'm about to say. Maybe it's all that needs to be said as I begin this week of reflection on love-  

Jesus. 

After all this time? 

Always.  

The One that Took Me Four Years to Write

 

A little over four years ago, I sat on the bed in the middle of a November night watching numbers climb while my heart fell. It was happening. He was going to win.

In the days after, I wasn’t filled with outrage, but my spirit sank. It was a lot to take in. I had already seen enough of him- enough egocentrism and bullying to know what lie ahead, or at least,  the pale foreshadows of it.

I remember reading Garrison Keillor’s piece in the Washington Post on November 9, 2016. His prediction for himself and people like him.

We liberal elitists are now completely in the clear. The government is in Republican hands. Let them deal with him. Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids, and we Democrats can go for a long , brisk walk and smell the roses.

He had my number, for sure. I might not self-identify as a “liberal elitist”, but I actually did all of those things over the past four years- except that I read Harry Potter instead of Jane Austen. But our tomatoes were quite lovely. He wasn’t being glib. He goes on to predict the damage that would come, but he knew that people like me wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Can any amount of gardening, meditating or travel help us recover from the soul-wounds we’ve suffered the past four years?

Let me check my privilege. I am a white heterosexual, Christian female. The limits on my life are mostly self-imposed. The fears I face are from within and the suffering I endure is mostly spiritual and emotional. There are billions of people in this world who have a much harder row to hoe. But, because I am human, I suffer. Because I am a person with a soul, I grieve.

Some people say this isn’t a Democrat vs. Republican thing. To be honest, I don’t really know. I’m a high school science teacher. I know little about politics. I’ve forgotten a lot of what I learned in civics class, and I rely heavily on my trusted loved ones to help me understand what’s happening in the government. My parents are Democrats. And my husband was a Republican when I married him. After years of thinking I was righter than him, I started to listen. I didn’t always agree, but I started to understand. So I know a little bit about both sides. I love people on both sides. 

Putting the D and the R in front of what I’m trying to say here, though- it seems too small. Though, maybe, for some, it does boil down to that, because once I said “liberal elitist”, ya’ll were out, if you even made it that far.  

That quick exit is one of the reasons I haven’t written about this. In four years- I, who like to write, who sometimes need to write, haven’t written about this man and the division he’s helped create. There are a lot of reasons why. Remember those fears within me? I’m terrified of other people’s words. I’ve been so scared of other people’s opinions about what I might write that I’ve kept my words hidden. But it hasn’t only been fear. Good sense has also kept me quiet. There’s a lot more that I don’t know than I do know. I try not to write about things that I don’t know. I’ve learned to sit with it and try to figure it out before putting words to it. I’ve sat with it for four years. I haven’t figured it out, but I’ve figured out how I feel about it.  So here you go, whether you like it or not. And you can have at the Facebook comments. I’m not going to respond.

Some of my friends told me that they felt hopeful on Wednesday, January 20, 2021. I admit that I cried when I saw those masked faces walking through the guarded doors. The Bushes, the Obamas, Mike Pence and then, the winners of the 2020 election. Their arrival brought on a departure of the tension I’ve held in for four years. But it’s a little too early for hope for me.

“My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness,” wrote Edward Mote in 1834. Those words are so deeply etched into my soul, that, as much as I love America, I don’t put my hope in it. As many good things that can come from liberty and justice for all, it isn’t enough. Easy for me to say as a middle class white lady. Liberty and justice haven’t ever really been taken away from me, but I’ll take my cues from history, and from the saints throughout the ages who did suffer but believed that real hope is only found in one place- one Person. I like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and I love Barack and Michelle Obama. But I don’t hope in them. I never did. And, to be honest, I’m not sure that they would really want me to.

My hope has been, and still is, in Jesus. And that’s where my greatest grief has come from for four years. Because Jesus has been, and still is, dragged into the selfish, egotistical, careless, and I’ll just go ahead and say it- crazy musings of an out-of-control narcissist.

This isn’t my first rodeo with this, though. There are a lot of narcissists out there abusing Jesus and his people. They’re in charge of churches, families, non-profits and missions organizations. But they’ve never been president before. And that’s where, in my opinion, Donald Trump has truly damaged the soul of America.

For many people, Trump represents something morally reprehensible, something foul that has brought reckless damage to the soul of our nation. Some of those people believe, like me, that their hope is built on nothing less than Jesus. Some of them do not believe in Jesus. How we define the soul of America is different for different Americans. I love those Americans, and I’m certain that nothing could be more important from me in this hour than to agree that our soul does, indeed, need time to heal, however we define it. Now is not the time for me to talk about my beliefs about the eternal soul. That’s another conversation for another day.

Now is the time for me to say, if only to myself, that though God’s mercy falls on Donald Trump like sweetest rain this morning, just like it falls on me- that he is not a representation of the Jesus on whom I’ve built my hope. But after four years of his boasts and his lies, some people still believe that he is. I have to write down, out of love, and out of the hope that's etched so deeply into my soul- that he is not.

Donald Trump loves himself. In four years, that’s all I’ve seen him do. He doesn’t love God or America. He doesn’t love Republicans, and he hates liberal elitists and their tomatoes. But Jesus does not. Jesus loves me. He loves me, exactly as I am, exactly where I am, for exactly who I am. This doesn’t mean I’m perfect. It doesn’t mean that I’m not aware of my sinfulness. But it does mean that  I’m awake to the reality that I live in a country, in a time and in a Church in which I need to preach that Gospel to myself and the people I love. Because we live in a country, in a time and in a Church, when many followers of Jesus have forgotten. Instead, they've replaced that truth with a belief that says you have to share a conservative value system, hate liberals, vote against certain policies and follow this (now former) President to be counted a "true" follower of Jesus. 

I reject that. And, though it's taken me four years- I’m writing it down. I won’t listen to you, Christian Trump-supporters. I can't. Because your message is damaging my soul and the soul of this country.  But I’m not going to hate you. I’m not going to view you as my enemy or “the problem" with everything in our society. I’m not going to pray pitying prayers so filled with condescension that they would turn our God’s stomach, rather than his ear. I’m just going to remind myself, each and every day, that my hope is built on someone who loves me, and because of that love, he has never asked and never will ask that I allow myself and my brothers and sisters to be abused by a narcissist bully. And I'll put my hope in this- that God is true and that God is love and that his name will come through this in the end, pure and holy and still eager to have mercy on even you and even me.

God bless me. God bless you. And God bless America.

photo credit The Kansas City Star